Between Russia and the EU: Europe’s Arc of Instability

Introduction

The war in Ukraine has left a group of “in-between” European countries more vulnerable and insecure than ever before. These countries—Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, and Serbia—find themselves in what we have termed an “arc of instability” between Russia and the European Union.

This paper, a collaboration between two scholars from Carnegie Europe and one from Carnegie’s Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, is the first of four looking at the issues facing these in-between states. It examines how Russia seeks to maintain influence and leverage in them, the weaknesses it seeks to exploit, and the changing narratives it uses to win the loyalty of swing voters and deter the West. The three subsequent publications will look in more detail at the situation in Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Moldova.

All of these in-between states are outside of the European Union and NATO, but are building stronger ties with the EU: several are prospective members of the union. They also maintain many connections with Russia, and are home to pro-Russian political forces and business interests. Many still buy Russian gas. Armenia is a member of two Russian-led institutions—the Eurasian Economic Union and (for now, at least) the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)—but is in the process of reevaluating the utility of membership in these organizations. 

Since 2022, the EU and the United States have deployed substantial new political and economic resources to support these in-between states. The EU has relaunched its enlargement process, which had been stalled since 2013, and given candidate status to Moldova, Ukraine, and (more conditionally) Georgia—something that would have been unthinkable a little more than two years ago. It has set up the European Union Mission in Armenia (EUMA) to monitor the border, the first such mission in a country that is a member of the Russia-led CSTO. Moldova is being weaned off of its dependence on Russian gas.

Still, it would be complacent to assume that the European trajectory of these in-between countries is a given. The enlargement process still has a long way to go before the candidate countries achieve actual membership, leaving skeptical EU governments with many opportunities to exercise vetoes. Public opinion in the in-between countries is growing more pro-European, but societies are still divided. In all these countries, a large section of the population says they want good relations with both Russia and the countries of the European Union. In Serbia, for example, 51 percent of people want to be on good terms with both Russia and the EU (13 percent are pro-Western but want to maintain ties with Moscow, while 38 percent want Russia and the West to be given equal treatment), according to a 2022 poll by the International Republican Institute (IRI).¹

What path these countries take will be largely determined by developments beyond their control—in particular, the course of the war in Ukraine and complex intra-EU discussions about the future of the European project. If Russia is even partly successful in its war of aggression in Ukraine, destabilization or military action against its other neighbors cannot be ruled out. Conversely, Ukrainian military success against Russia and an accelerated path toward EU accession for Ukraine increases the European prospects of other states.

Geography matters. The states of the Western Balkans are surrounded by EU countries, which necessarily limits Russia’s political ambitions there—even as disillusionment with the EU over the slow pace of enlargement gives Russia leverage. The same cannot be said for Moldova, less still for Georgia and Armenia. Georgia’s border with Russia and three-decade-long conflicts over Abkhazia and South Ossetia, recognized as independent by Moscow in 2008,² make it vulnerable to any shifts in Russia’s war with Ukraine. It is likely this sense of vulnerability that drives the Georgian Dream government’s soft rapprochement with Russia on many issues since 2022.

When it comes to Armenia and Moldova, geography is nothing less than critical. There are many similarities in their political profiles: both countries are small and poor by European standards, and both currently have pro-European governments and large societal constituencies that are still close to Russia. Armenia, however, is far from the EU, sandwiched between Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Türkiye (and has no diplomatic relations with Azerbaijan and Türkiye). Russia is still by default its main security and energy provider—a dependence that the Armenian government is signaling it wants to begin to break. Moldova’s two neighbors, by contrast, are Romania—a friendly EU country—and Ukraine, a fellow candidate for joining the union. The support of both neighbors has allowed Moldova to make the EU rather than Russia its main gas supplier since 2022, and to begin accession negotiations with Brussels without suffering (so far) a major backlash from Russia.

Workers from both Armenia and Moldova go abroad to seek employment and send home remittances. Again, there is a sharp contrast in their choices. Moldovan passport holders (including in the breakaway territory of Transnistria) enjoy visa-free travel to the EU, and many Moldovans now have Romanian passports as well, meaning that they can find employment in Europe, which in turn exacerbates the country’s brain drain. By contrast, as many as 300,000 Armenians still work in Russia, although many have returned home since 2022.³

In addition to the war in Ukraine, for which 2024 will be a critical year, the medium-term future of Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova will be determined by three other geopolitical factors in which the EU and Russia will play a role: the countries’ domestic security concerns,the choices and decisions made by political leaders, and how successfully and rapidly the EU’s revamped enlargement policy proceeds.

A Competition for Hearts and Minds

The most public manifestation of the confrontation between Russia and the West in the in-between countries is in the realm of ideas. Since 2022, Moscow has changed its messaging. Today’s weakened Russia puts less emphasis on its role as security patron and energy provider and more on an ideological message: that it provides an alternative pole to the West and in particular to the “global hegemon” of the United States, which is portrayed as the puppet master of unwilling European countries.

To that end, Russian President Vladimir Putin has appropriated Western vocabulary about “values,” “choice,” and especially “sovereignty” to boost Russia’s alternative vision. In a speech to the World Russian People’s Council on November 28, 2023, Putin said:

We are now fighting not just for Russia’s freedom, but for the freedom of the whole world. We can frankly say that the dictatorship of one hegemon is becoming decrepit. We see it, and everyone sees it now. It is getting out of control and is simply dangerous for others. This is now clear to the global majority. But again, it is our country that is now at the forefront of building a fairer world order. And I would like to stress this: without a sovereign and strong Russia, no lasting and stable international system is possible.⁴

In the fight for the hearts and minds of people in Eastern Europe, the Russian leadership rarely claims that it is more prosperous than the West. Rather, it concentrates on criticizing two key aspects of the West. The first is Western countries’ alleged double standards and inability to live up to their lofty rhetoric; the second is their moral decadence.

A stress on “traditional values” and on gender and LGBTQ issues in particular is designed to enlist the support of conservative constituencies in Eastern Europe for Russia. The traditionalist agenda requires zero effort from its supporters, but allows them to consider themselves morally superior simply because they do not belong to the LGBTQ community.

The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which has strongly supported Russia’s war in Ukraine, is a key ally in propagating this message. Several Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe are either directly affiliated with or have close relations with the ROC, allowing Moscow to bypass governments and local media to spread a pro-Russia message in hundreds of parishes.

In Moldova, for example, despite the government’s pro-Western stance, around 90 percent of Orthodox believers belong to the Moldovan Orthodox Church, which is in communion with the ROC. Even though dozens of priests have switched their allegiance since 2022 to the Romanian-language Metropolis of Bessarabia, which is part of the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Moldovan Orthodox Church leadership has been equivocal about the war in Ukraine and many of its leading priests are strongly pro-Russian.⁵

The Georgian Orthodox Church is also closer to Russia than much of the general public and has taken a relatively soft position on the war, trying to maintain relations with both the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul. By contrast, Armenia’s national church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, is an Oriental Orthodox Church not affiliated with either the Russian or Ukrainian churches. It shares an agenda of “traditional values,” but not Russia’s geopolitical agenda regarding Ukraine.

Russia and the EU are courting both core constituencies in the in-between states and those who might be called swing voters: the many people who are not firmly committed to either a Western or an Eastern trajectory for their country. In all these countries, the political situation is highly volatile. Moscow clearly believes that even in countries that have made a formal commitment to EU membership, the game is not lost.

This means that Russia will work hard to support political forces with a pro-Moscow orientation in elections, such as the upcoming presidential and parliamentary votes in Moldova. Despite the official ban on Russian state media broadcasting there, Moscow still manages to reach a wide audience by using the local networks of the pro-Russian Gagauzia autonomous region, as well as social media. In its propaganda, the Kremlin portrays Moldova’s integration with the EU as a smokescreen for the country’s absorption by Romania and promotes anti-LGBTQ narratives presented as “traditional values.” The latter resonate with the public especially well because they are supported by the Moldovan Orthodox Church and pander to deep-seated prejudices in Moldovan society: in opinion polls, over 70 percent of Moldovans say they would not accept an LGBTQ person as their neighbor.⁶

In Serbia, a hybrid authoritarian-democratic government professes that EU membership is its strategic goal but declines to align with Western sanctions against Russia. It still courts Russian diplomatic support in fighting Kosovo’s independence while routinely voting against Moscow at the UN General Assembly. A similar situation is unfolding in Georgia, where the ruling Georgian Dream party has formally promoted EU accession while expanding various forms of cooperation with Russia. In the weak democracies of Moldova and Armenia, pro-European governing parties contend with opposition parties that want to tilt the country back toward Russia.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the geopolitical orientation division runs along ethnic lines. Bosnian Serb leader of the Republika Srpska (RS) province Milorad Dodik’s policies vis-à-vis Russia—such as refusing to join in sanctioning Russia and maintaining close relations with the country—enjoy support among his constituents. According to an IRI survey from 2022, 89 percent of Serbs in Bosnia have a favorable view of Russia, compared to only 27 percent of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) and 39 percent of Bosnian Croats.⁷ According to a National Democratic Institute poll from 2021, 82 percent of Bosnian Serbs (mostly living in Serb-dominated RS) are against NATO membership, while 90 percent of Bosniaks and 92 percent of Bosnian Croats are in favor.⁸

Public opinion in Moldova lags far behind the pace of international developments. According to a 2023 IRI poll, over half of Moldovans (52 percent) still believe Russia to be Moldova’s most important economic partner.⁹ In a question on this issue, for which respondents could choose more than one answer, the EU got only slightly more: 68 percent.¹⁰ In reality, the EU overtook Russia in Moldova’s foreign trade over two decades ago, and now trades over five times more with the country than Russia does. 

This reality has prevented a major realignment in the country’s domestic politics. Even though pro-EU President Maia Sandu is the most popular and most trusted politician in Moldova by a wide margin, with a positive rating of over 40 percent among decided voters, populist pro-Russian parties still fare quite well, with their combined support hovering around 40 percent.¹¹

In Armenia, meanwhile, public opinion has turned away from Russia—the country’s traditional main ally—following Moscow’s failure to act during Azerbaijan’s seizure of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia last fall. In an IRI opinion poll conducted in December 2023, when asked for their assessment of international partners, 89 percent of Armenians named the country’s relationship with the United States as “good” or “very good,” and 87 percent said the same of the European Union.¹² In contrast, only 31 percent had the same opinion of relations with Moscow, while 66 percent said the relationship with Russia was “bad.” This marks a calamitous decline from October 2019, when 93 percent of respondents said the relationship with Russia was “good” and just 6 percent said it was “bad.”

Still, 48 percent of Armenians said that Russia was the country’s most important economic partner (it is indeed its biggest trading partner), and 31 percent said it was the country’s most important security partner: a higher figure than for the EU, but lower than for the United States. In other words, Russia remains for many a patron of convenience and necessity, if not necessarily of choice.

In this context, it is important for Russia to broadcast the message that the West and Ukraine will not prevail in the war—and that nonaligned European countries should be careful about investing fully in alliances with the EU and NATO.

Security and Geopolitical Affiliation

Since 2022, the consensus among political elites and experts in the West has been that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has strengthened Western solidarity and the two main Western alliances, the EU and NATO. The proof of this is the unanimous adoption and renewal of EU sanctions packages against Russia and the fact that EU enlargement has been relaunched—something that was a very distant prospect prior to 2022. The Western narrative also holds that NATO has become more powerful after two previously neutral countries, Finland and Sweden, joined the alliance.

The Russian narrative is that this is an illusion. NATO is painted as an American hegemonic project imposed on unwilling Europeans, while the EU, also under American influence, allegedly works against the interests of its own population by opposing Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has described U.S.-EU relations as “the relationship of a suzerain and his vassals.”¹³

The Kremlin constantly points to any evidence of cracks in the two Western alliances as evidence that the in-between countries should be careful about joining them. Hungary and Slovakia, for example, are portrayed as harbingers of change in the EU. In his December press conference, Putin praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for his stand against other EU leaders over Ukraine,¹⁴ along with the recently elected prime minister of Slovakia, the populist Euroskeptic Robert Fico. These two leaders, Putin said, “are defending their countries’ interests. But there are too few politicians like this; I do not know why they do not exist. Maybe this has to do with Europe’s excessive dependence on the Big Brother—the United States.”¹⁵

Russian officials frequently forecast disaster for the European Union. In December 2023, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov predicted that “the EU will collapse” under the burden of Ukraine’s accession. ¹⁶ Mikhail Sheremet, a parliamentarian from annexed Crimea, said that EU sanctions against Russia would destroy Europeans’ prosperity and eventually the union itself. He said: “With each package of sanctions, the leaders of European countries not only lose face and respect in front of the international community, but elicit annoyance and growing discontent in their own countries, leading the EU to its death.”¹⁷

In the Western Balkans, a Euroskeptic message will always find its target. Russia tells these countries that they should be allowed to freely choose their international alignments (in contrast to Ukraine, which, according to Moscow, has no such choice). Russia accuses the EU and NATO of using empty promises of Euro-Atlantic integration to subdue the region’s Orthodox nations and settle Balkan conflicts at their expense. The EU, Moscow insists, will make Serbia recognize Kosovo without granting any reciprocal concessions, and will turn North Macedonia into a semi-Albanian state.¹⁸ NATO membership is said to be wrong for Bosnia and Herzegovina as it will jeopardize peace.¹⁹ The EU is portrayed as weak and insincere in its promise to accept the Western Balkans into its ranks. And even if they were to join, Russia says the countries would be treated unfairly.

In May 2022, for example, Russia’s ambassador to Sarajevo, Igor Kalabukhov, argued in a piece for Glas Srpske, an RS–published daily, that Bosnia and Herzegovina’s membership in the “institutionally and morally” decadent EU would bring it no benefits and entail the loss of its sovereignty.²⁰ His colleague Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, ambassador to Serbia, accused EU and U.S. mediators between Prishtina and Belgrade of a lack of fairness. He also condemned Western pressure on Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Most recently, Russia accused the West of destabilizing Serbia by inciting the protests that followed the country’s controversial December 17 parliamentary elections.²¹

The region’s security architecture (or lack thereof) is still shaped by the legacy of the 1990s wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Kosovo. Almost all of the Balkan countries have now joined NATO, with the significant exceptions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Serbia. In Serbia, the memory of NATO’s bombardment of Belgrade and other towns in 1999 and its role in facilitating Kosovo’s independence also prevent the country from joining NATO, even though Belgrade has engaged in security cooperation with the United States.

The same legacy also fuels continuing pro-Russian sentiment among the Bosnian Serbs. Thanks to the ethno-federal structure sanctioned by the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian War, Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the countries where Russian influence is at its strongest in the region. The leadership in RS—the Serb-majority entity that, alongside the Bosniak- and Croat-dominated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), makes up the country—makes no secret of its close links to the Kremlin. Bosnia and Herzegovina has had a NATO membership action plan since 2018 but will struggle to join the alliance, as it could reignite the conflict with RS. The commitment to speeding up integration into NATO was dropped from the agenda of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s state-level cabinet, which includes Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, the principal Serbian party.

With RS holding wide-ranging powers within the loose federation (powers that are constantly expanding, thanks to Dodik’s brinkmanship), the entity can act as a quasi-state, pursuing its own external policies. In September 2022, Dodik met Putin in Moscow ahead of the Bosnian elections.²² Because of the RS veto, Bosnia and Herzegovina has not joined Western sanctions against Russia in response to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.²³ In addition, RS and its representatives can block decisions in central institutions such as the cabinet and the federal parliament.

Internally, Dodik has been playing an increasingly disruptive role. He has upgraded the RS police force with weaponry supplied by Russia, raising fears that an RS force separate from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s integrated army could reconstitute itself. Dodik has repeatedly threatened to withdraw RS from state-level institutions, including the judiciary, the tax authority, and the military.²⁴ Russia typically backs Dodik through the Peace Implementation Council.²⁵ In addition, Russia has called for the abolition of the Office of the High Representative (OHR), which has historically contained Serbs’ secessionist ambitions, notably through the so-called Bonn powers that allow the head of the OHR (who comes from an EU member state) to sack officials and impose legislation.²⁶ Dodik has furthermore openly defied decisions by OHR head Christian Schmidt, and is now a defendant in a trial that he has dismissed as a political witch hunt. Although Russia is a key ally in these domestic squabbles, the Serb leader has other patrons, too—notably Hungary, which has vetoed the imposition of EU sanctions.

Despite all this, the European Union maintains a gravitational pull. In December 2023, the European Council reconfirmed its commitment to authorize membership talks with Sarajevo, should certain conditions be met. Russia, however, is exploiting cynicism about the EU and resentment against the West (chiefly the United States) by focusing on the bitter legacy of the 1990s, on alleged Western double standards, and on the extremely slow pace of EU enlargement.

There are plenty of local grievances and conflicts to exploit. In 2018–2019, pro-Russian actors took key part in the demonstrations against the Prespa Agreement that resolved the decades-old name dispute between (North) Macedonia and Greece. In Serbia, the main anti-Western argument upon which Russia relies is the West’s sponsorship of Kosovo’s independence. The message is that the West works against national sovereignty. The Kosovo leadership, including Prime Minister Albin Kurti and President Vjosa Osmani, has repeatedly accused Russia of fomenting tension in the Serb-populated north, which has seen an uptick of violence over the past year.²⁷ Following the shoot-out between Serb militants and the Kosovar police at the Banjska Monastery in September 2023, authorities in Prishtina said they were investigating a possible Russian connection.²⁸

Moscow’s agenda is aimed at obstructing EU and U.S. efforts to integrate the region into the West, not at establishing Russia as a political, diplomatic, and economic hegemon, a feat that even the Soviet Union failed to accomplish in the early Cold War period. Russia therefore acts as a spoiler, seeing the Western Balkans as yet another arena in the competition with the United States and its allies.

Moldova is constitutionally neutral with no commitment to join NATO, unlike its two neighbors, NATO member Romania and aspirant NATO candidate Ukraine. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, however, Moldova has found itself in a completely new international and security environment. Moscow’s indiscriminate use of force just across the border and public statements that it intended to conquer vast territories—and potentially attack Moldova as well—changed the mood overnight.

The West’s renewed interest in the region and the EU’s eagerness to overcome its enlargement fatigue worked to the advantage of Moldova’s governing party, the pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS). In less than two years, Moldova—together with Ukraine—managed to acquire EU candidate status and start formal talks on accession. These are achievements that in prewar times would likely have taken decades to complete at best. Moldova has also intensified its security cooperation with NATO, breaking a long-standing taboo based on fear of a Russian backlash.

Opinion polls suggest that the Moldovan public lags behind the government in perspectives on the war next door.Two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as many as 30 percent of Moldovans said that Russia posed no threat to their country. Even many of those who opposed the Kremlin’s intervention are in favor of accommodating Russia. In terms of national security, 58 percent of Moldovans believe that neutrality still offers the best protection for the country, while support for NATO accession has increased only marginally to 30 percent up from 20–25 percent in the prewar years.²⁹ Support for EU membership is much stronger at around 60 percent, though the fear of provoking Russia is also tangible, with only 19 percent favoring the idea of quitting the Commonwealth of Independent States (the organization of former Soviet countries).³⁰

Even though the war has come dangerously close to Moldova’s borders, so far it has failed to bring security issues to the forefront of public attention. In an August 2023 IRI poll, only 5 percent of Moldovans named war and conflict among their key concerns.³¹ The leading concerns were high prices (43 percent), corruption (27 percent), and low incomes (24 percent). Frustrated and disoriented by the socioeconomic difficulties exacerbated by the war, Moldovans are looking for easy explanations and solutions. According to a WatchDog.MD poll done in February 2023, over 40 percent of Moldovans deemed Russia a fascist state, while over 30 percent considered Ukraine to be run by fascists.³² Only around one third declared their readiness to defend their country in the event of a Russian invasion, and upward of 67 percent believed that President Maia Sandu should go to Moscow to negotiate a new gas contract. These findings suggest that economic problems largely eclipse security concerns for the majority of Moldovan society.

Russia is eager to take advantage of this confusion, and the war has made Moscow even less scrupulous in its methods. Over the past two years, the United States and EU have sanctioned a number of Russia-linked individuals for attempts to undermine Moldova’s sovereignty, while Chisinau has expelled dozens of Russian diplomats for hostile actions. There is ample evidence that Moscow and its local proxies, led by the fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor, have been buying votes,³³ staging anti-government protests, running disinformation campaigns, and spawning a plethora of new political parties to promote a pro-Russian agenda and sow confusion in the run-up to the autumn presidential election.³⁴ Moscow views the upcoming vote as an opportunity to thwart Moldova’s EU ambitions and bring pro-Russian forces back to power. The latter, despite being mired in numerous corruption scandals, still enjoy high support in Moldovan society, deftly capitalizing on socioeconomic difficulties.

Outside Ukraine itself, the most dramatic change in posture toward Russia in a post-Soviet country since 2022 has been in Armenia. For the past thirty years, Armenia’s security concerns have centered on Azerbaijan and the future of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and its Armenian population. A military alliance with Russia first struck in 1996 and then renewed and extended in 2010 was seen as the best guarantee of Armenia’s security and also of the status quo around Karabakh, which had been in Armenia’s favor since the ceasefire of 1994.

Azerbaijan’s victorious military campaign of 2020, followed by the war in Ukraine, put a strain on the Armenian-Russian alliance. Following an Azerbaijani military incursion into Armenian territory in September 2022, Armenia tried to trigger the security provisions of the Russia-led CSTO. Neither Russia, which also has a strong relationship with Azerbaijan, nor any other CSTO members came to Armenia’s aid. Since then, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has publicly questioned the utility of Armenia’s CSTO membership, and his officials have stopped attending CSTO meetings.

Anti-Russian sentiment in Armenia deepened further after Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh stood aside and allowed Azerbaijani forces to take the disputed region by force in its entirety in September 2023. Despite a forced exodus of the local Armenian population, Moscow did not criticize Azerbaijan for the takeover of Karabakh and instead lashed out at Pashinyan’s government.

This is the context in which Armenian-Russian relations have soured rapidly and the Pashinyan government is looking to the West. Armenia is now turning to other partners beyond Russia to ensure its security. This means procuring weapons from France and India; accepting the EU civilian border-monitoring mission, EUMA, in southern Armenia against the objections of Azerbaijan;³⁵ and hosting a (largely symbolic) U.S. military training exercise in September 2023. At the same time, Armenia seeks to strengthen its relationship with Georgia as a way of getting closer to the EU and increasing trade via the Black Sea with EU countries. 

Economic Interests

The EU can lay claim to being one of the most successful economic projects in history. Almost all countries that have joined it have become more prosperous, and this economic pull continues to attract neighboring states to aspire to join the union. This leaves Russia at a disadvantage and means that its pitch to its neighbors does not focus primarily on money. Russian foreign direct investment in all of these countries is minimal compared to the sums the EU and other countries such as China and Türkiye spend on major industrial and infrastructure projects.

Moscow’s strategy is a different one. Having learned from the failure of Soviet propaganda, modern-day Russia rarely challenges the fact that people in the West enjoy higher living standards. It does, however, successfully cast doubt on the West’s ability to extend its own prosperity to the societies of Eastern Europe. Russia revels in showcasing discrepancies between generous Western promises and the gloomy realities of Eastern Europe. These exposures are usually followed by offers of a bird in the hand instead of two in the bush.

Putin’s own rhetoric about the impact of the Moldova-EU Association Agreement is a case in point. According to the Russian leader, “Moldovan goods have almost lost their traditional place in Russia and have not gained a foothold in other markets.”³⁶ Putin’s claim that the deal has led to a decrease in bilateral trade between Moldova and the EU was false, but it helps illustrate the way Moscow frames its message to neighboring countries: the benefits of cooperation with Russia may appear more basic, but they are easier to grasp. Be it Moldova’s fruit, Armenia’s cognac, or Georgia’s tourism industry,Russia’s neighbors would do better to stick with less affluent but less choosy Russian customers, because they have no chance of succeeding in the EU. Essentially, Moscow tries to persuade the societies of Eastern Europe that they are not good enough to achieve affluence in the Western system.

Discounted gas has long been an instrument Russia has used to wield influence. As of 2021, Moldova was 100 percent reliant on Russian gas.³⁷ The country suffered an energy crisis in 2022 after Russia drastically cut supplies and Ukraine also reduced its exports of electricity. Today Moldova has fully weaned itself off of Russian gas and is increasing electricity imports from its European neighbors to the west.

In December 2023, Putin openly lobbied Moldovans, claiming that their choice to receive gas from the West was political and would hurt consumers. He said:

Moldova is one of Europe’s poorest countries. Only recently, it was the poorest of them all. Today, Ukraine holds this title. But if one of Europe’s poorest countries, which has been buying our energy resources at a price that was quite low, wants to follow in Germany’s footsteps, go ahead. Today, Germany buys its energy resources from the United States and pays 30 percent more compared to what it imported from the Russian Federation. So, if they have some extra money to spend over in Moldova, let them go down this road.³⁸

The same message is being sent to Armenia, which currently pays Russia $165 per thousand cubic meters of gas, well below the market price in Europe.³⁹

A paradox of the Ukraine war is that even as Armenia’s political and security relationship with Russia has deteriorated sharply, Armenia’s economy has benefited from an influx of Russian migrants and Russia’s need for trading partners. In 2023, Armenia-Russia trade volumes were worth more than $7.3 billion: a record number.⁴⁰

Russia uses sticks as well as carrots. In late 2023, Russia banned imports of agricultural produce from both Armenia and Moldova, supposedly on sanitary grounds. Farmers in both countries are heavily reliant on the Russian market. This followed a suspension of Armenian dairy exports in March 2023.⁴¹ Restrictions on the border crossing at Upper Lars in Georgia in the Caucasus mountains also hurt Armenian businesses that are reliant on this route to trade with Russia.⁴²

Russia has many opportunities to apply economic pressure tactics against Moldova and Armenia, just as it has done against Georgia in the past. However, the Kremlin must balance risky tactics such as cutting off gas exports or banning agricultural goods against the prospect that this will alienate the public in those countries and encourage their leaders to diversify their economies.

In 2006, Georgia and Moldova responded to a protracted Russian ban on wine exports by fundamentally restructuring and modernizing their wine industries. Even though Georgian wine eventually returned to the Russian market in 2013, it also expanded its inroads into other markets around the world, from China to Western Europe. While Russia is now once again the main export destination for Georgian wine, the country’s ambitions would have been far narrower if Russia had not forced the issue.⁴³

Moldova is also diversifying its export markets. The EU overtook Russia as the country’s leading export destination back in 2014, and that margin has gradually increased ever since. The war and the ensuing collapse of traditional transport routes dealt a final blow to Russia’s status as a major market for Moldovan goods. In 2021–2023 export volumes halved, decreasing Russia’s share in Moldova’s exports to a negligible 3.5 percent.⁴⁴ If sanctions against Russia are tightened or trade routes via Georgia shut down, Armenia may be forced to do the same and support for Russia among Armenia’s traditionally Russian-oriented business community could fall.

Conclusion

Russia’s ill-fated invasion of Ukraine has dealt a severe blow to its ability to project military and economic power in its neighborhood. A number of countries that are not members of either the EU or NATO, and that in the prewar years looked set to remain forever in a gray zone between Russia and the West, have suddenly found themselves much better positioned to make progress on the path of Euro-Atlantic integration and strengthen cooperation with both the EU and the United States. Many impediments remain, however, not least the unanimity principle in EU decisionmaking, which can still slow down or halt the accession prospects of candidate countries. In a country such as Armenia, whose government aspires to closer alignment with the West, European states face a more immediate problem: how to assist a government that is heavily reliant on Russian gas and wheat and that—as a member of the Eurasian Economic Union—is disqualified from pursuing a free trade agreement with the EU.

Moreover, even though pro-European sentiment has grown, societies in countries such as Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Moldova are divided, and opinion polls suggest there are many “swing voters” who are receptive to the messages of both Russia and the West.

The Kremlin’s appeal has never been limited to solely financial or military issues. Its ever- deepening confrontation with the West has pushed Moscow into creating more sophisticated and comprehensive messaging in its attempt to present its vision as a viable alternative to a Western-led international order. Russia is good at taking advantage of local conflicts, capitalizing on preexisting tensions, and recruiting the support of disgruntled segments of society.

Negative messaging about the West gets an especially sympathetic hearing in those segments, especially among Orthodox Christian believers, who regard themselves as adherents of “traditional values” and are skeptical of the liberal values promoted in Western countries. Russia also appeals to the economically disadvantaged, such as rural farmers and migrant workers who do not see immediate obvious economic benefits of European integration and are more used to selling their products to Russia than to EU countries or working there.

In three forthcoming papers, Carnegie scholars will map out the more specific and differing challenges facing Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Moldova as they navigate relations with both Russia and the West. Despite their many differences, these three countries share a predicament in that their medium-term futures are highly dependent on the course of the war in Ukraine. In all these countries Moscow continues to send the message that its historic interest there is deep and long-term, and that the West can be an unreliable partner.

Notes